When we think of the executions of 1916, we think of Kilmainham Gaol.
But Cork has its own surviving 1916 execution site.
In this episode of Undercover Irish, we return to Cork Military Detention Barracks and tell the story of Thomas Kent, the east Cork Volunteer executed there on 9 May 1916 and secretly buried within the military grounds.
We trace Kent's life from Castlelyons to Boston, where he became involved in Irish-language and cultural organisations, through the Land War and his imprisonment for land agitation, and into the Irish Volunteers in the years immediately before the Rising.
We then follow the events of 1916 in Cork, the gun battle at Bawnard House, Kent's court-martial and execution, and the decision to deny his family his body.
The story then turns to another remarkable Cork revolutionary: Tadhg Barry — republican, socialist, trade unionist, journalist, Irish-language activist and major GAA figure.
Imprisoned in the same military complex at Christmas 1916, Barry was shown the hidden burial place of Thomas Kent by a sympathetic guard. He marked the spot, fell to his knees, kissed the ground and later recorded the moment in a poem.
That poem was published in 1921, the same year Barry himself was shot and killed while interned at Ballykinlar.
We also look at the role of Cork railway workers in keeping Kent's memory alive, the eventual identification of his remains, and his State reinterment in Castlelyons in 2015.
And finally, we return to the question hanging over this entire series:
What should happen to Cork Military Detention Barracks now?
The grave marker remains.
The execution site remains.
The prison remains.
And yet the building is under threat of demolition.
If Kilmainham teaches us the importance of preserving the places where history actually happened, then Cork still has a choice to make.
And Thomas Kent is only the beginning.
Because thirteen other republicans were later executed within this military complex, while Terence MacSwiney spent the first night of his world-famous hunger strike here.
That story continues in the next episode of Undercover Irish ,Uncovering Ireland's Hidden Curriculum.
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